The Issues
Heinzerling was a driving force behind the landmark 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court decision. As the lead author of the plaintiffs’ briefs, Heinzerling made the scientific argument that emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from motor vehicles were classified as pollutants under 1970’s Clean Air Act and thus the EPA has to regulate them.
But the court decision was only the beginning of the struggle to actually implement regulations during the George W. Bush administration. In a January 2009 memo, Obama’s incoming EPA head Jackson pledged to “move ahead to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision recognizing EPA’s obligation to address climate change under the Clean Air Act.”
In April 2009, Jackson issued findings officially declaring six gases—carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluorid—as pollutants that were harmful the the public health because they contribute to global warming. The announcement opened the door for the agency to regulate those gases and represented a major shift the government's appraoch to global warming.
The finding opened the door for the House to pass legislation in June 2009 curbing the emissions of greenhouse gases through a controversial cap-and-trade system. The Senate plans to consider cap-and-trade legislation this year.
Despite her success in the legal arena, Heinzerling does not have flattering words for the Supremes. "I've decided to choose one word to describe the current Supreme Court, and the word I've chosen is 'scary,’” she said on a May 2008 Princeton University alumni panel. “I think some of the justices have a kind of tin ear for justice.”
The Economy
Heinzerling focus on reducing carbon emissions fits with the president’s plan to decrease the impact of climate change, a plan that’s integrally tied to Obama’s economic recovery efforts.
In a January 2009 memo to all EPA employees, Jackson said the president’s goal was to “transition to a low-carbon economy while creating jobs and making the investment we need to emerge from the current recession and create a strong foundation for future growth.”
Cost-Benefit Analysis
Heinzerling is a harsh critic of one tool favored by other environmentalists: cost-benefit analysis.
This type of analysis, according to Heinzerling, led the EPA to value a life at $6.1 million as part of a 2000 study of arsenic in drinking water.
“The agency settled on that seemingly arbitrary number after a study of how much American workers demanded in wage increases to face annual accident risks,” Heinzerling argued in her 2004 book, Priceless: On Knowing the Cost of Everything and the Value of Nothing, which she co-authored with Tufts University’s Frank Ackerman. Ackerman and Heinzerling criticized the approach as cold, and argued that human life cannot be valued so quantitatively.
In cost-benefit analysis, “Human lives are not human lives, but ‘statistical’ -- a handy construct that allows economists to pretend that life itself is not at stake in debates over environmental policy,” Heinzerling wrote on the environmental news site, Grist.org. “And shivers of joy and glimpses of the infinite do not appear in cost-benefit tables.”
Heinzerling’s criticism of cost-benefit analysis could be setting her up for a showdown with the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, led by cost-benefit analysis proponent Cass R. Sunstein.
It won’t be the first time Heinzerling and Sunstein have gone head to head on the theory. Sunstein reviewed Heinzerling and Ackerman’s book in The New Republic, saying, “In deciding what to do, it is inadequate to argue in favor of precautions. We have to know about costs and benefits, too--and we should try to be as quantitative as we possibly can.”
As Obama’s regulatory czar, new EPA policies are likely to go through Sunstein’s office.
In April 2009, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA could use cost-benefit analysis in implementing the Clean Water Act. the ruling meant the EPA was allowed—but not required—to weigh the cost of upgrading power plants against the benefit of protecting fish. It was a defeat for the environmental group, Riverkeeper, who had brought the lawsuit.
